


Two Ghosts

by puppyeolie



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bullying, Depression, Drugs, Exes, High School, Homophobia, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Past Relationship(s), Suicide Attempt, Tags Are Hard, hyuck is a loner, idk what i'm doing yet ok, mark is fucking awkward, markhyuck, markhyuck are exes, more characters will be added as the story goes on, nomin, nomin are going strong, there will be a few flashback chapters, they are sad and lonely
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:35:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27476647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puppyeolie/pseuds/puppyeolie
Summary: Lee Donghyuck is a loner, and he shitposts on tumblr every other day that he's fucking okay with it.Alternately, Mark Lee shows up in his ex's life and realizes he's never been out of it.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee, Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18





	1. Uncomfortably Numb

**Author's Note:**

> i have no fucking idea what i'm doing in this fic yet, but please, bear with me. title from harry styles' two ghosts.

Donghyuck walks out of the library, hours wasted researching a paper he wouldn’t write until the night before the deadline high on Jaemin’s deadly coffee, cursing himself as well as the professor.

The cold bites at the sliver of his exposed stomach; so much for cropping all the fucking hoodies he owned. But he knows he looks good, and his mother wouldn’t approve, and he’d take that over freezing to death any day. He clutches the denim jacket over it tighter as goosebumps break across the soft down running across his torso.

He walks across the campus as it empties out in clusters of laughing groups of friends he hates but would sell a lung to be in, the stoners hanging back to get their evening started. Hyuck wants to be fucking high too, but he’s a fucking nerd who takes two puffs to look cool and stops at the third because he’s fucking afraid of anything and everything, although he will never admit it and snaps at his mother anytime she dares call him a coward, and his broke ass isn’t too keen on paying for the weed anyway.

Hyuck pays for his usual coke at the closing cafeteria and makes his way out, rummaging for a cigarette in the pockets of his skinny jeans.

It’s fucking crushed. He hates everything. He lights it with his cheap pastel yellow lighter anyway.

He sits on a bench alternating drags of his cigarette and sips of his coke, his staple college diet, as a couple make out against the tree by him.

He sighs and plugs in his earphones when the sloppy smacking of their lips gets too loud, a couple of horny young adults would not move Lee fucking Donghyuck from his favourite spot.

He feels so fucking lonely.

Hyuck shitposts on tumblr about fucking loving being a loner every other day, and he’s not entirely lying, but sometimes he really fucking wishes his whole class didn’t hate him, and that he wasn’t stuck doing a group project alone because nobody would pair up with the bitchy boy who got ousted by his bitchy friend group even.

He has barely spoken five sentences to a human being the entire day, and some days, some days, the fucking heaviness in his chest that hasn’t left since he was thirteen and broke his favourite album gets to him way too much, and he wishes it would swallow him alive because he’s fucking done with himself, and all the Phoebe Bridgers he plays every night doesn’t help, and he really really wishes he still had people to bitch about other people with, if only to take his mind off every mistake he’s ever made playing on loop in his head in vivid detail.

He contemplates calling up Jaemin, but he was probably in some dingy corner of the campus, pressed up against a dirty graffitied wall by Jeno, and of all the horrible names Donghyuck had been called his entire twenty-year life, cockblocker wasn’t one.

Hyuck sits on in his favourite spot even as the PDA couple leaves, scrolling through literary shitposts on tumblr on the verge of the fifth mental breakdown of the week and he doesn’t know how shit went down so fast and he doesn’t remember stomping on his cigarette butt with his vintage doc martens and he doesn’t remember when the song playing on his earphones ended and Come As You Are came on and Cobain sings about not having a gun and he swears he doesn’t have a gun and he keeps swearing but he fucking did and he fucking blew his brains out and if Hyuck could he probably would too but he is fucking scared of anything and every-

He hears him before he sees him.

Hyuck snaps his head so fast he is awed that it doesn’t break, and there he is, in an oversized black hoodie and all his awkward glory, laughing his fucking awkward laugh that Hyuck always told him was cute, Mark Lee, Mark fucking Lee.

Mark Lee, childhood best friend and the self-proclaimed love of Hyuck’s life.

Mark Lee, whom Hyuck had once sworn he would hide a dead body for.

Mark Lee, fucking talented Mark Lee that everyone loved but who never loved himself, fucking perfect Mark Lee whose smile could light up the whole room but who cried in Hyuck’s arms for hours straight because he thought the room was closing in on him and he was suffocating every time he looked at his smile in the mirror.

Mark Lee, whose heart Hyuck had broken approximately a year and half ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes um first chapter, a bit short ik. title from american football and hayley williams' uncomfortably numb.


	2. The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows

_Three years ago_

Donghyuck is seventeen and smoking in the boys’ washroom when Mark walks in and raises his seagull eyebrows so fucking high it almost looks comical.

“Hyuck, what the actual fuck!”, Mark snatches the cigarette right out of Donghyuck’s long pretty fingers.

Mark often tells Hyuck that he has a musician’s fingers, and offers to teach him the guitar.

“What would I need you for then, dumbass?”, Hyuck retorts every time.

Truth is, Donghyuck is lazy, and vocal lessons are tiresome enough. And he likes his boyfriend playing the guitar every time he sings, of course he does, makes for a nice aesthetic.

He knows they won’t get anywhere with it, him singing and Mark on the guitar, they’ll end up in college majoring in things they know they aren’t fucking good enough at, things a thousand leagues away from music, Hyuck’s vocal lessons forgotten and Mark’s guitar shoved in a corner of his messy room, only to be brought out at house parties when he’s too drunk and cannot think of anything else to do.

It’s alright, Hyuck thinks, it’s alright. As long as he’s with Mark, it’ll be alright.

“Do you think I haven’t seen you smoking more questionable things with that questionable foreign exchange student you always hang out with these days?”

Mark’s face flushes red, he has never been one to hide things from Donghyuck.

“I-I- that was just twice, alright? And Yukhei isn’t questionable.”, Mark rolls his eyes, his typical response whenever he doesn’t have a proper comeback to Hyuck, which is quite often.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”, Hyuck quips back.

Mark huffs and puts the unfinished cigarette between his lips, Hyuck smiles a victorious smile.

“This means we are indirectly kissing you know.”, Hyuck smirks at Mark.

Mark chokes on the cigarette and starts coughing incessantly. It’s drowned out by Donghyuck’s shrill laughter.

“Dude what the fuck?”

“Don’t act like you don’t beg me to kiss you every time you come over.”

“No, but why would you say something so utterly lame and juvenile, is this a Wattpad fanfic now?”

It’s Hyuck’s turn to huff.

“Whatever, smartass.”

Mark smiles and goes back to his cigarette, hollowing his cheeks out as he takes long drags, his prominent cheekbones popping further out.

Hyuck would make fun of them any other day, but right then he shuffles closer instead, shirt scraping against dirty washroom walls littered with swear words because this is high school and swear words are cool.

He loops his fingers through Mark’s free hand.

Mark tenses under the contact.

“Hyuck, not here.”, Mark detaches himself from Donghyuck, shoves his hand away harder than Donghyuck would have liked.

This has happened before, but Donghyuck feels fresh heartbreak ripping through his bones every single time. Mark has his reasons, but Dongyuck is tired of them.

“It’s a fucking empty washroom, Mark.”

“Anybody could walk in any moment.”

“We’ll fucking break apart then, it’s not like I asked you to fucking snog me.”

“How will you explain why we were holding hands in the first place? You know how they are.”, Mark looks down at the soiled tiles of the washroom floor, the cigarette in his hand burns away.

Hyuck is exasperated, he’s fucking done, and he wants to shove Mark against the wall and crash his lips against his just to prove a point, but Mark isn’t wrong and Hyuck fucking hates to admit it but Mark isn’t wrong, of course he isn’t, Mark Lee is never fucking wrong, and Hyuck, he is afraid too, has always been.

His eyes are tearing up now, and Donghyuck hates how easily he cries, and hates how everyone thinks he cries to get away with being a bitch, and hates how the boys fucking whisper that he cries because he likes fucking men and men like little boys who cry, because Hyuck’s a fucking virgin and he’s not into fucking age gaps because Mark Lee is the only boy he has ever loved and he doesn’t even know his sexuality or himself beyond Mark Lee, and he wishes he could justify him being a crybaby with something as easy and base and carnal as that but he fucking can’t, and he really fucking wishes he could, but he can’t.

“Hyuck, are you crying, fuck please don’t, fuck, look at me.”

“No, I’m not.”, Donghyuck angrily rubs at his watery eyes with his shirt sleeve, but the tears keep rolling down and this time he lets them be because a corner of his brain thinks Mark would hold him now that he is crying, and he really wishes he would, because all he has ever wanted is for Mark to hold him, scratch that, just fucking touch him at least. And he knows it is stupid, and he knows it’s dangerous and he knows Mark is right, of course Mark Lee is always right, but he is so tired of hiding their relationship, he knows he has to, unless he wants the both of them beaten to a pulp at the street corner like Jaemin was a year ago, but he is so fucking tired of hiding everything they have and just one fucking touch would do, just to remind Donghyuck that it was not all up in his head, and that Mark still loved him, still loved him away from the privacy of their rooms and abandoned parks in shady parts of town. Just one fucking touch would do.

But Mark won’t touch him, Mark won’t shove his chin up to make him look him in the face like he wants him to, and Donghyuck feels so stupid throwing a fit over something so fucking petty, but Donghyuck is petty, and he’s fucking tired, so he walks into a washroom stall and slams the door as hard as he can just for the dramatic effect, and stands there like the sobbing mess he is as Mark pleads him to open up in whispers.

The school bell rings out, and the quiet air of the washroom is full of shuffling feet. Mark’s pleas cease as meaningless conversations filter through Donghyuck’s ears and he isn’t sobbing anymore because he can’t let rabid high school boys hear him crying in a washroom stall again, can’t let the fact that Lee Donghyuck had been crying alone in a washroom stall spread through this shitty high school like wildfire once again.

It had taken Donghyuck a whole year to build his reputation up from ruins because he was the boy whose best friend had been a fag, he was the boy whose best friend had been beaten up so bad because he was a fag that he transferred to some far off place none of them could even name, he was the fag’s best friend, and they all whispered he was a fag too.

Donghyuck was a fucking fag, and he told himself he wouldn’t mind getting beaten to a bloody mess over it, but he was a fucking coward too, and he wasn’t ashamed of it yet, because he wasn’t stupid enough to get himself hurt over some sense of fake heroism that wouldn’t fucking matter in this shitty high school in this shitty town, and god, he wouldn’t let Mark get hurt over it, he would never.

So when Jaemin left, Donghyuck didn’t let himself grieve, and he got himself new friends and god did he fucking hate them and he told Jaemin over the phone every weekend that he did, he fucking hated them, but he didn’t have “FAG” written with red marker in the most awful of handwritings on his desk anymore, and that would have to do.

Donghyuck walks out when an eerie silence overcomes the washroom once more, and it’s empty and Mark isn’t there anymore, of course he isn’t, and Hyuck hates himself for hoping otherwise because all hope ever does is hurt, hurt and fucking hurt, and he can’t live on hope.

Mark has left, of course he has.

\-------------------------------------

Donghyuck has just had the frozen dinner his mother had left him before leaving for her night shift when the doorbell rings.

He knows it’s Mark. It has always been this way.

Mark holds out a bar of chocolate and a sad smile when Donghyuck opens the door. His smile widens when he lets him in.

Mark holds him to sleep that night, as he keeps whispering that he loves him, he fucking loves him, and that he will never let him go, and Hyuck holds his hands like he is drowning and Mark is the only promise that he will ever be ashore again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from a song by brand new, hope you guys like this chapter, will update soon.


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